Niveo Professional NGS16TP - Manual (Page 14)

10
NIVEO PROFESSIONAL Gigabit Management Switch
User's Manual
6. Manage / Configure the Switch
6.1 Introduction of the management functions
This switch is a L2 Management switch. It supports in-band management function from
Http/Telnet/SNMP interfaces. Console is supported for local command-line settings. It
supports network configuration functions, like VLAN, Trunking, Port Mirror, QoS,
spanning tree and software backup/update. Users can configure these functions for
different network applications. The following is a brief introduction about these
functions before the detail operation sections.
1. VLAN (Virtual LAN)
VLAN can divide the switch to several broadcast domains to prevent network traffic
between different user groups. This switch supports 802.1Q tag-based VLAN and Port-
based VLAN. Users with the same VLAN ID can transfer data to each other. The
network traffic will be blocked if they have different VLAN ID. VLAN Stacking function
for 802.1Q tag-based VLAN is supported. It allows two VLAN tags in a packet for
802.1Q VLAN tunnelling application through a central network.
2. Trunk
If two switches are cascaded together, the bottleneck will happen at the cascading
connection. If more cables could be used for the cascading connection, it will reduce
the bottleneck problem. In normal case, switches will become unstable because of
traffic looping when more than one cable is connected between them. If the switches
support trunk function, they can treat these cables as one connection between them.
The traffic looping will not happen between these cables and the switches will work
stable with bigger bandwidth between them.
Notes: About redundant application
The trunk connection supports redundant function. If any trunk cable is broken, the
traffic going through that cable will be transferred to another trunk cable
automatically. For example, if traffic of user port Port 6 is assigned to Port 1 in a Trunk
and Port 1 connection breaks, Port 2 will take over the traffic for Port 6 automatically.
(It could be used for redundant application.)
3. Spanning Tree Protocol / Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol
Spanning tree is a protocol to prevent network loop in network topology. If network
loop happens, it will cause switches in the network unstable because more and more
traffic will loop in the network. If network loop happens, spanning tree protocol will
block one connection in the loop automatically. But it will also cause a period of delay
(30 seconds for STP and shorter time for RSTP) if any network connection is changed
because of the network topology detection operation of the protocol.
Because there could be more than one switch in the network, users can configure this
function for their network spanning tree application.